An armed pro-Russian separatist stands at a site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash in the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014 (Reuters / Maxim Zmeyev) / Reuters

The crash of a Malaysian Airlines plane in eastern Ukraine must be investigated thoroughly and objectively, Russian President Putin said in a statement. The tragedy underlines the urgent need for a peaceful resolution of the armed conflict in Ukraine.

Putin’s statement came after he contacted Dutch Prime Minister
Mark Rutte to express condolences over the deaths of his fellow
citizens in the disaster.

The majority of the passengers of the ill-fated flight, which was
apparently shot down over the war zone in eastern Ukraine on
Thursday, were from the Netherlands.

Earlier the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), a Russia-based
international body tasked with investigation of all civil
aircraft incidents in most former Soviet republics, including
Ukraine, called for the formation of an international
investigative group under the aegis of the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN body, to investigate the
incident.

The IAC said such a group should be handed over MH17 flight
recorders, which are currently being recovered in Ukraine’s
Donetsk Region.

So far two flight recorders from the plane have been reportedly
recovered in the region currently controlled by the militia
forces. Some militia officials said they intended to hand them
over to Moscow because they didn’t trust Kiev to properly
investigate the incident.

The probe into the loss of the Boeing-777 is bound to be a
politically loaded one. There was no official confirmation that
the plane was shot down rather than crashed from a different
cause, but the parties involved are already trading blame for the
tragedy.

Both the Ukrainian military and the militias fighting against
Kiev denied shooting at the plane and stated that they had no
capability to take down an aircraft flying 10,000 meters high.

Some politicians and Western media are pointing fingers at
Russia, alleging that it is responsible for the Malaysia Airlines
plane’s loss. They claim Moscow could have provided a missile
launcher, which the Ukrainian militia used to take down the
plane.

Kiev in the past few days accused the Russian military of several
direct attacks in its territory, including an airstrike, which
militia reported as conducted by the Ukrainian military, and a
downing of a Ukrainian military plane, which militia claimed was
their doing. The Russian military called the accusations absurd.

Hours after the crash of the Boeing 777 was reported, Kiev
published what it called intercepted communications between
militia officers and their Russian handler to apparently discuss
the take-down of a civilian aircraft by the militia. The militia
labeled the recording “an amateurish fake.”

There were almost 300 people on board Malaysia Airlines flight
17, which was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, including
283 passengers and 15 crewmembers. In addition to Dutch travelers
and Malaysian crew, there were Australians, Indonesians and
citizens of several other countries. Nobody survived the crash.